A Chinese single woman who professes to be a Christian goes to bed with a Malay single man who professes to be a Muslim. Subsequently, the woman ends the affair. Spurned, the man releases compromising photos of the woman into the public realm.
Has anybody done anything wrong?
Questions:
1. Should a woman professing Christianity have premarital sex?
2. Should a man professing Islam have premarital sex?
3. Should they have premarital sex with each other?
4. Should the man release indecent photos of the woman afterwards?
If we look at the questions from the point of law, what are the answers?
Which laws do we use? The regular old law as applied to everybody or Syariah Law since a Muslim is involved?
If Syariah Law says the Malay man must be punished for fornication (zina) or close proximity (khalwat), should we punish the Chinese woman also?
What about looking at the questions from the point of religion?
What does the Koran have to say about this? What does the Bible have to say about this? Do the two holy books agree or will we get two sets of answers?
A Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Sikh and a Christian sat down at the mamak stall today and had a very frank and honest discussion. Since the five of them were of different faiths, they each turned to their own religion for an answer. They each tried to remember what their holy books said were right and wrong.
It was a very difficult struggle because there were mitigating factors: the woman was an advocate for environmental issues, active in the civil rights movement and was an elected Member of Parliament and an assemblywoman. She was a hardworking politician who wasn’t tempted by money.
As the mamak stall conversation went on, one person felt the issue was like asking a man to decide whether he ought to be punished for embezzling RM10,000 in public funds when he had never been caught sleeping with another man’s wife, persecuting others from different faiths, chopping down the five-hundred-year-old tree in his village, spitting in public.
Should a man be punished for stealing when he has never ever been promiscuous, racist, sexist, or rude to mother nature?
Then another person thought it was unfair to even ask such the questions or talk about the Chinese woman and the Malay man. Sex is private, he yelled, leave them alone.
To which one of his friends retorted: Oh yeah, look what happened to Anwar Ibrahim. If sex were private, nobody would have anything to say about gay sex, group sex, animal sex, kid sex, and Chua Soi Lek sex. Oh no, sex is a very public matter indeed.
But there was consent, his friend said. Consent!
His friend replied: One can also consent to be killed but that doesn’t make euthanasia right.
Everybody fell silent. The Hindu, the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Sikh and the Christian. Each was worried about what they were going to say when they got home tonight. Their sons and daughters were going to ask them: ‘Papa, Mama, is it all right for me to sleep with a Muslim/Sikh/Buddhist/Christian/Hindu single person, break up, and then one of us puts nude pictures of the other person on the Internet?’
How should they answer? Has anybody done anything wrong?
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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